


Practical housekeeping: A careful compilation of tried and approved recipes

by traveller



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-20
Updated: 2005-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 13:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traveller/pseuds/traveller





	Practical housekeeping: A careful compilation of tried and approved recipes

**fidelis**

He washes dishes with careful concentration, with steady hands and steaming water. The pair of faucets have only a single default setting each, freeze and scald respectively; the basin is ancient, its porcelain webbed with fine cracks, like when you roll a boiled egg on the tabletop and the shell crumbles but still holds.

The dog flops on the floor with a sigh.

The worktop is flecked with fish scales, opalescent bright green and blue and pink and purple; through the kitchen door comes the smell of trout slowly cooking on the grill. The door swings and bangs now and then when it's caught by the wind, the spring that's supposed to keep the thing drawn shut long since stretched past usefulness. They are used to the noise.

And the dog doesn't howl when the door slams, and he doesn't notice the change in the air until the blue stone in his shirt pocket starts to grow warm over his heart, and he doesn't drop the plate when he turns but his hands tremble just a bit, just enough to be seen.

I thought you were gone, he thinks, smiling but feeling foolish, confronted with contrary evidence, with the return.

 

 **burgundy**

The floors were made of wide planks of pine, the varnish worn away by decade upon decade of feet, of boots and trainers and moccasins and sandals, of toes and socks and cleats. The floors felt smooth and safe but Viggo warned against going barefoot; Orlando nodded and agreed but couldn't see any reason why he should heed advice that wasn't actually followed by the advice-giver. As such it was Orlando pressed facedown across the bed on a Thursday afternoon, screaming into a pillow while Viggo sat on him to dig the splinter out of the soft part of his foot, Orlando who was then tucked in under a soft wool blanket, with a glass of bittersweet dark wine and an orange, already peeled.

Viggo paced the bedroom, his cigarette hanging from his lip, and Orlando could hear the wind moan through the pines, Orlando could hear the windows rattle in their frames, and finally Viggo shrugged and pinched off the end of his cigarette. When he slid in beside Orlando his hands were warm and his breath was stale and Orlando spilled a little wine in his hurry to forget that he ever hurt, even for a moment.

 

 **copper**

From kitchen to bedroom and back again, sleeping waking fucking drinking eating fucking sleeping, and sometimes they sit on the porch-swing clutching steaming mugs of tea and the dog snoring at their feet, and sometimes the kettle will whistle until Viggo snaps his fingers _one two three_ , and sometimes in bed, in the soft space between _there_ and _there_ , a spotted owl will call and Orlando will hear a flutter of feathers on the other side of the glass, and sometimes when he's moving inside Orlando Viggo will close his hand around Orlando's narrow ankle and stroke his thumb over the bone that juts out like an accusation, just there.

The days and nights start to bleed together, the sense of time hanging suspended like a tiny golden spider from the doorframe. No newspaper, no television, no mail. The hi-fi squats in the corner of the parlor, smelling of wood polish and tweed speakers and hot transistors, occasionally offering a hockey game broadcast in French, a football game in Spanish, or a ballad mumbled in a voice cracked with age.

And sometimes when they walk the rooms Orlando finds pennies scattered on the thresholds, bright and shining, always heads up.

 

 **wool**

He wraps himself in layers, in flannel pyjama bottoms washed to impossible softness, in t-shirts worn to paper thinness, in a nappy black and blue sweater that's too long in the arms and too stretched in the collar, that's unraveling at the bottom in frayed loops and snarls. He makes instant coffee with hot tap water, stirs in the sugar with his finger, or sometimes the handle of a butter knife; he's given up cream because the milkman refuses to deliver out here, because the store is too far for his weary feet.

He nestles in the big old chair next to the radio in the parlor, its buttery soft beige leather cradling him like a beloved pair of arms. He pulls up his knees and rests his cheek on his folded arms, he watches the sun rise and set, he watches the moon grow fat and round and then diminish again. Some nights, when the heavens are crowding the view through the dusty windowpane and he has read the same postcard (on the front, an Art Deco Metaxa advertisement, on the back, seven words) one time for every star, he'll fall asleep there and wake to a warmer morning.

 

 **arcadia**

"How is it a violet if it's yellow?" Orlando asked and Viggo laughed and Orlando's heart clattered and clashed like a cymbal in his chest.

"How does it matter if it's for you?" Viggo's smile was wide and crooked and sharp. "I don't pick flowers for just anyone."

So Viggo arranged the blossoms in a bowl on the table, yellow petals against a dark stoneware glaze that couldn't decide if it wanted to be green or blue, so Orlando threw open the windows and swept the floor and Viggo said,

"This place, we can always come back to this place. It never changes. It's always here, and it'll always be ours."

A paradox, like yellow violets, the promise of ageless refuge. Everything changes, and everything goes away, and nothing is certain. Orlando had learned that lesson long before Viggo ever picked him flowers.

Orlando put the corn broom next to the refrigerator when he was finished; he leaned on the sink and watched the brittle eyelet curtains lift and fall with the breeze. The door banged and the boards creaked, and again Viggo stood in the doorway, his hands held out, cupped, full of white petals.

Orlando laughed, and believed.

 

 **glass**

Poets will forever talk of twilight, of that purple in-between time, perhaps because it seems to be a palpable transition, when so many transitions only become apparent once they have passed, once the circumstance has become irrevocable. Or perhaps it is a less philosophical urge. Perhaps the poet loves the waning day, the waxing evening, because it is an infinitely flattering light, masking the imperfect and gratifying the pleasant.

It is in this hour that an empty green bottle rolls along the floor and rights itself near the wall, beneath the window. Their bed groans with them, one brass bed knob rubbing a crease on the wallpaper, the smudge dark next to a handprint that glows bright in the pale lavender light. Their breath, one breath, gusts like the wind outside and the window fogs with its warmth, and with that of their bodies, in the cool of the evening.

And when they crumple and fold onto the sheets, their angles still joined, their fingers still tangled, something shatters in the dark. Viggo raises his head, listening, but Orlando cups his cheek, brings him back down for a kiss. Orlando understands that sometimes, things must break in order to mend.

 

 **goldenrod**

The suitcase is a decrepit leather box, its tooling lifting up at the corners, its satin lining smelling strongly of mold and mothballs. The stitching on the handle blisters his palm when he carries it, it bangs his leg mercilessly as he walks, but he will travel with no other.

He can fit an entire wardrobe in there, can and does: jeans, corduroys, socks and sweaters, t-shirts, boxer shorts, and one best loved denim shirt, the one with the paint just there and the tear just there, with the worn spot at the collar from hanging on dozens of nails.

His bare toes curl on the floor; he folds his ticket in half and slips in the back pocket of his jeans. The bed bounces a little when tarnished latches of the suitcase snap shut, a heavy, final sound.

On a Tuesday in October he sits on the porch swing and watches the leaves on the maple tree turn yellow and red and begin to fall, he watches the black taxi pull up and then pull away. When he goes back inside the suitcase is returned to its place under the bed; his clothes lie neatly folded in their drawers.

 

 **persimmon**

Orlando didn't cook from books which was good since most of Viggo's had leaves torn out, since they'd been bought less with cookery in mind than with other purposes - he had wanted the taste of the words instead of the food.

Orlando made a peppery chutney that tasted like falling in love, and a salty fish chowder that tasted like grief. He made an apple pie that brought Viggo to tears, and although Viggo refused to share the memory that had risen like a blister on his tongue, afterward he thanked Orlando, on his knees at Orlando's feet.

There was butternut squash soup, shepherd's pie, and cock-a-leekie, there was roast pork, milk gravy, and twenty-three different sorts of omelet, one for every way to say "Good morning."

"It's good to eat," Orlando explained, putting down on the table a dish of curry that tasted like a particular Sunday in June. "People should eat more, right?"

People should eat this bread that tastes like mother's love, people should eat this sauce that tastes like mortality. People should eat their lives like meals, savoring the richness, taking each course for a gift.

Orlando grinned, shaking his tea-towel, and Viggo nodded his understanding.

 

 **steel**

The dog settles on the hearth with a yawn, its heavy jaws snapping shut like a scissor, bringing its powerful limbs in to curl into a tight ball. Neither of them remember where it came from, just that it has always been there, has always been _theirs_ ; they have loved it and named it and offered it a kind of redemption. It knows belonging now.

The morning is gray with the threat of rain, and the windows slide closed with soft bangs, their felted sashes absorbing the sound. The dog sighs in its sleep, its feet kicking toward the smoldering fire. The flue is open; a drop falls and hisses on last night's embers.

They need more, they need to crawl inside each other without thought of self or sin. They ring and crash, their edges sparking together; they curve and settle, resting one inside the other. The floors echo with the sounds of their steps, the doors swing wide with memory. In the bedroom, the wallpaper peels away from the spot just behind the bed knob.

Again, I want you again.

Their whispers carve themselves into the foundation, flow with the water through the pipes. The dog rolls over.

 

 **arethusa**

The hill is covered with flowers, even in winter; the spring never freezes and never runs dry. Kind letters arrive now and then; he reads them and then feeds them into the fire. He sweeps the hearth morning and night, keeps the ashes from the fireplace in a bucket by the door to scatter on the steps when it's icy or wet.

Sometimes the dog will press its nose into his palm, will whine until he follows it to the door - sometimes the front, sometimes the back, but never an open door. He cooks for two, he does the washing up and puts the pans and plates and cups carefully away. He listens for knocking, for footsteps; he hears a car come and then go again, he hears the days come and then go again.

And then one day the dog gets up and barks at him, it bites at his sleeves until he goes with it. He closes his hand over the pink stone in his right pocket, he follows the dog's heavy tread down the hall to the bedroom door.

I thought you were gone, he thinks, smiling but feeling foolish, confronted with contrary evidence, with the return.


End file.
